Medical technology can improve and even prolong people's lives, while reducing long-term health costs associated with complications and long-term health care, particularly for those with chronic diseases. Unfortunately, use of such medical technology may be costly and inconvenient. For example, a patient/user may be required to have a medical device implanted, worn, carried or otherwise maintained near their person. Alternatively or in addition, the user and/or personnel of an institution (e.g., hospital, personal care home, nursing home, etc) may need to maintain an additional device (a “medical controller”) for purposes of, e.g., monitoring, controlling, reading from, or updating information to the aforementioned medical device.
Because of strict regulatory requirements imposed on medical devices, such medical controllers typically require a substantial amount of time, money and risk to design, develop, test, validate, certify, manufacture, inventory, distribute, upgrade and receive reimbursement. When compared to the more rapid development pace of general user devices (e.g., mobile devices, laptops, personal computers, etc), medical controllers tend to be technically inferior in relation to, among other things, processor speed, amount of memory, screen type and resolution, connectivity, security as well as other operational and performance characteristics.
Much of a user device's design, development, testing, validation, certification, manufacturing, inventory, distribution, upgrade capabilities and processes and reimbursement/subsidization are already managed by various parties. For example, parties that manage these aspects in a mobile device ecosystem include phone OEMs, distributors, wireless carriers, network operators, application developers as well as others. However, mass-market mobile devices have not been permitted to play the roll of a medical controller due to several considerations, including but not limited to:
1) Technological constraints such as local radio frequency (RF) technology (e.g. Bluetooth, Bluetooth LE, Zigbee, ANT, MICS, MEDS, WiFi, Peanut, etc.) utilized by a mobile device and the power consumption required for communication with a medical device and 2) Safety and privacy constraints relating to requirements of, for example, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for enhanced methods and systems to address these problems as well as others.